I love ginger and this cake meets my ginger cravings. Ingredients : What you need 130g plain flour 130g SR flour 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 2 eggs 170ml golden syrup 170ml sour cream 1 ½ tsp. finely grated lemon zest 1 Tsp. freshly grated ginger ½ cup brown sugar 180g butter melted 150g pitted dates chopped 6 (I used a lot more!) crystallised ginger finely sliced Section 2: Add Numbered Directions Preheat oven to 180 degrees and butter a 24/5 round cake tin. Line with backing paper Put plain, SR flour, ground ginger, baking powder, salt into large bowl and whisk together for a minute. In a separate bowl add lightly beaten eggs, golden syrup, sour cream, lemon zest, fresh ginger, brown sugar and butter. Whisk until just combined Tip flour mixture into the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Toss in dates mixed with an extra couple of Tsp. of flour so they don’t fall to the bottom. Pour batter into the tin and scatter the crystalised ginger on top Belinda says to bake the cake for 35/40 minutes but I found in my oven that it was closer to an hour. Cake should spring back when pressed in the centre. Leave the cake for about 7 minutes before undoing the spring form or inverting. I served mine with a mixture of sour cream, sheep’s yoghurt, vanilla extract and a pinch of sugar!

My aunt gave me this recipe when I was about 12. I have been making it ever since. Simple and beautiful. Ingredients : What you need 4 eggs 2 cups sugar 1cup milk 2 heap cups self raising flour 4 dessert spoons cocoa 250 g melted butter Method : How to make Beat all ingredients except butter. When mixed add the butter Pour into a prepared cake tin and bake at 180 degrees for about 1 hour or until a skewer comes out ALMOST clean when you insert it into the middle of the cake. My extra tip: At the melted butter stage I added a whole lot of homemade orange jam, then iced the cake with Lint orange dark chocolate ganache ( very easy…just melt chocolate and some butter in a heavy bottom saucepan over low heat until its melted and glossy)

This recipe was in the paper years ago. I love the contrast between the caramel burnt top and the luscious filling. Ingredients : What you need Grease 1 or 2 tins and line with baking paper on base and sides 7 whole eggs 1kg Philadelphia cream cheese 400g castor sugar 1 tablespoon flour 500g cream Section 2: Add Numbered Directions Preheat oven to 220C Crack eggs and mix Using an electric mixer mix cream cheese until smooth (harder than it seems) Add beaten eggs slowly making sure all egg is incorporated into the cheese before adding more. Add sugar, flour and cream – blend well Pour into lined cake tins and bake for 50mins (less if making 2 cakes) Leave to completely cool before taking out of the tin. Frank Camorra warns that the cake gets a dark look but don’t be scared, it gives it a yummy caramel taste.

Given to me by a friend when our children were babies. It is still one of my favourites. Ingredients : What you need 8 eggs separated 1 ½ cups castor sugar 2cups SR flour 1cup olive oil 1cup fresh orange juice Rind of one large orange Method : How to make Beat egg whites with ¾ cup of sugar, then refrigerate until yolks are ready Beat yolks with remaining sugar and rind, when fluffy slowly add orange, flour and oil Take out whites from fridge and add yolk minture to whiles folding through with a wooden spoon Pour mixture into a Ungreased chiffon tin Bake for 1hr at 180C Put tin upside down when ready and let cool this way. The cake should come out very easily.

I found the cookbook with this recipe in a Cambodian airport. Who would have thought! Ingredients : What you need 1 cup roasted blanched almonds 1cup roasted hazelnuts (I used walnuts) ½ cup glace apricots (I used dried apricots or sultanas, currents etc) ½ cup glace pineapple (I used dried mango) ¼ cup mixed peel ½ cup dried figs chopped ¾ cups plain flour 1 tablespoon cocoa 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ½ teaspoon mixed spice ½ cup caster sugar ½ honey Method : How to make Preheat oven to 150°C. Line a 23 cm baking tray with baking paper In a large bowl combine nuts and fruit. Sift in flour, cocoa and spices and mix into the fruit and nuts Heat sugar and honey in a small pan on low until sugar has dissolved. Boil for 1 minute Pour hot syrup over the dry mixture, using a metal spoon combine quickly as the mixture will become very stiff Press into the prepared tin using wet fingers to spread the mixture out evenly Bake for 35-40 minutes. Leave in the tin until cold. The cake in best left for a few days before serving. When you do, dress it with icing sugar

The people in one of my series groups are serious coffee lovers. As I prepare my plunger coffee for them they often discuss which brands, strengths, and machines they feel makes that ultimate coffee. For a total non- coffee drinker (I think the stuff tastes like bitter poison! – should probably have chosen a different name for my business!!) I listen in wonder at their dedication to their coffee tastes. So for their class today I thought I’d make a mocha cake! This yummy moist one pan cake is one of the wonderful Belinda Jeffery’s recipes. I have to admit that many of MY cakes are from her cake book ‘mix and bake’. I’ve stuck to the recipes, varied them, and at times completely annihilated them but they always work and are always a great success. The less confident Andy wondered if their need for coffee before the class and their love of this coffee fuelled cake might have been a way for them to keep awake (the class is at 11am!) but the stimulating questions, and eager discuss which ensued after the class put my mind at ease! This class is on the history of the piano. Prior to its invention by Bartolomeo Christofori in 1700 the western world had 2 major types of keyboards. Harpsichords which were loud with a precise mechanism but had no warmth or dynamic range – in fact it was impossible to have dynamics because the strings were mechanically plucked; and Clavichords where the strings were hit by hammers, which had a beautiful sweet sound, dynamics but could barely be heard above a whisper! This Italian man, with the financial support of Ferdinando Medici, combined both these instruments to make a brand new instrument – the PIANO. The piano revolutionised music. People who would never have had the opportunity to hear music live were able to purchase piano reduction to play at home, operas could be performed without a full orchestra with the piano filling in the parts and before the TV the piano was the entertainment system for the family with the obligatory sing-along. The piano can be used as a solo instrument, to accompany voice (classical, jazz, pop or rock) and orchestral instruments, and is a vital member for so much beautiful chamber music. You would be very hard pressed to go anywhere in the world and not find a piano somewhere close by. With this fascinating topic I should never have doubted this class and their desire for coffee..not a way to keep awake but an addiction to the bean! Enjoy your coffee Andy By the way if you want an alternate history of the piano check out this Victor Borge youtube…very funny!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDJQ3ppdOU One –pan mocha cake 1/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa 75g unsalted butter 1/3 cup light olive oil (I used full strength) 2/3 strong black coffee 90g good quality dark chocolate 250g castor sugar 1 large egg 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract 1¼ plain flour (I used SF flour) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/3 cups buttermilk ​ Preheat oven to 150 C. Butter a 2 -24 round cake time. Line base with baking paper Put cocoa, butter, oil and coffee into a largish saucepan. Bring them to boil over medium heat, stir frequently until mixture is silky. Take off heat. Add chocolate and sugar and whisk until the choc has melted and mixture is smooth Cool. Add egg, vanilla and whisk thoroughly. Sift flour and baking powder (or SR flour) into mixture and stir until just combined. Whisk in buttermilk. Pour the batter into tin and shake gently to level out mixture. Bake for about 50 min or until skewer comes out of the cake clean when inserted into t he middle of the cake. Cool in tin for 5 minutes then invert cake onto rack and cool completely ​ I made ganache as an icing for this cake – in case it wasn’t chocolaty enough! Love me

I have just met one of my heroes. It wasn’t a famous movie star, a writer or a musician but was an experience I will never forget. A few weeks ago my mother and I were lucky enough to spend 5 days in New York. She was in charge of accommodation and travel and I was in charge of sightseeing. I had my list of things to do and on top of the list was the Metropolitan Museum. We arrived at the hotel, dropped our bags and marched straight to the Museum. This Museum is a colossal building full of people eager to see, experience and be awed. Its mission statement reads The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas. You could literally spend days and days in it and not see everything. Once there though, I was a woman on a mission. I wasn’t interested in the beautiful art works or the incredible priceless artefacts or seeing significant works from other cultures. Instead I headed straight to the musical instrument section. This day the instruments did not seem the most sort after exhibition. People wandered through laughing at the huge saxophones, amazing at the Stradivarius violins and the incredibly ornate harpsichords. As I wandered through, my sense of excitement grew. I hastily read the information about the differences between the Renaissance viols and the Baroque violins, took photos of the early clarinets, the ivory flutes…And then I saw it, all on its own, no one looking at it, no one intoxicated by its beauty or marvelling at its ingenuity. In fact people walked by it without even a glimpse. It was Bartolomeo Christofori’s original piano. One of only 3 left. Built in about 1720. Its coffin like box holds the secrets of a man who has been called the Leonardo di Vinci of musical instruments. Christofori took two existing keyboard instruments, the harpsichord which had force but no ability to play dynamics and clavichord which could play dynamics but had no force (also on display in the museum) and created a new keyboard instrument. This unbelievable instrument, on display, which no one was noticing. Apparently, according to my mother, on seeing this piano, I went pale, then red, and I know I started to cry. I was totally overwhelmed at actually being in its company. For many years now I have been giving classes about the history of the piano. I rave about Christofori and how the piano developed after him; but I don’t know if I ever thought I would actually see one of his masterpieces. After spending a long time being with it, feeling as if I was with royalty, finally we had to leave. I felt the elation of having experienced something this significant but also the sadness of knowing it would be a very long time before I felt its presence again. Heroes don’t have to be people. In fact I can’t think of a person who would potentially have this same effect on me…except for maybe Christofori himself….

When we, in the English speaking world, think about the music of World War II, it glows with warmth of great nostalgia. You can’t help but smile when listening to Vera Lynn or watching the American war musicals of the period. In fact, I was recently listening to 702 ABC radio when the presenter, a musician, talked about his love of the music from the war years as a lady listening to his show crooned a song down the telephone for all to hear. But what if this music didn’t have that same feeling of nostalgia? What if, instead, it conjured up the atrocities of the period? The German people have a very different feeling of the music from WWII. For them, the music of the war years does not have this same warmth. This isn’t because Germany lost the war. Germany was defeated in WWI, but the music lives on. Instead this is because of the atrocities which were taking place during the war. The mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, people with mental disorders, Russians. It is very hard to listen to the positive stirring German war music of the period once these facts were known. As a result, it is hard for historians to accurately tell how popular war songs were in Germany. We do know that Goebbels tried to ban the hit song ‘Lil Marlene’ but had to backtrack when German soldiers kept requesting it on German radio. A little aside to this story is that the Allies requested Vera Lynn make a recording of the same song in English, because the English soldiers were listening to it on German radio stations! The Nazis have records of the music played on the radios, but it is hard to gage the extent to which this music was enjoyed by the German people. It would be very hard for the German population, in hindsight, to now say they enjoyed certain songs. And many composers were banned. From 1933 music in Germany became Nazified in a policy called ‘Gleichschaltung’ (coordination). Musicians who fitted the Nazi ideals were highly promoted especially Wagner, while Jewish composers like Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Schoenberg were banned as was Jazz as Black musicians did not fit the Aryan ideals. Scrolling through ‘YouTube’ there are collections of German Military Marches from the period but besides ‘Lil Marlene’ you are hard pressed to find a popular song. In fact some popular songs were sung in the concentration camps with inmates changing the words to suit their dire situation. How then could you feel warmth by singing the same songs with the right words? I find it very hard to imagine what it must be like when the music of a period is not played: where, on the radio, no presenter talks nostalgically after a member of the listening audience sings sentimentally a song from the era. It must feel like a black hole or a ‘no go’ area. In June, I am giving 2 talks at the Art Gallery of NSW. The first is on Music during WWI and the second on Music during WWII. This is one of the topics I will be discussing. And although there is a morning tea before that talk, at this stage I won’t be bringing my own cakes! But I did find a fantastic little cake recipe book last year in one of those cheap book shops. It is called “Gorgeous Cakes’ by an English cake chef called Annie Bell. Every cake has worked beautifully but this one was a little bit special. TOWERING ALASKA Meringues 3 medium egg whites, 120g caster sugar, pink or blue food colouring Cake 4 medium eggs – separated, 175g caster sugar, 225g ground almonds, 1 teaspoon baking powder – sifted Filling 200g black cherry jam – stirred until smooth, 300ml whipped cream Meringues – preheat oven to 120 degrees. Whisk egg whites until they have the consistency of shaving cream. Sprinkle 1 heaped tablespoon of sugar, whisking after each addition until you have a smooth, glossy meringue. Divide mixture into 2 and add a different colour to each. Drop teaspoons of mixture onto baking trays lined with baking paper. Put meringues into the oven and turn it down to 100 degrees. Cook for 1 hour making sure they are crisp on the outside and sound hollow. Remove and leave to cool. Cake – turn oven to 180 degrees and butter a 23cm spring form tin. Whisk egg yolks and sugar together. The mixture should not be too pale and thick. Stiffly whisk the egg whites and gently fold them into the mixture in 3 goes. Fold in the ground almonds and the baking powder. Pour cake mixture into the tin tapping the tin to bring up any air bubbles. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the top feels springy to touch. Place cake on a serving plate and spread the surface with jam. Top with whipped cream and then top with meringues.

Ginger Pudding Cake and 2013 at Coffee Cake and Culture. 2013 has been a pretty busy year for Coffee Cake and Culture. Not only have my home classes continued to grow, but I have given “one off’ talks at Woollahra Library, Flute Tree and Limmud Oz 2013. This year I also wrote a new series “Music’s Mechanical Make-up” which delved into 6 elements of music. They are melody, rhythm, harmony, the bass, the orchestra and literature in music. I found this series fantastic to research and great fun to present. When we listen to music we rarely think about the components which bring it together. In “Music’s Mechanical Make-up’ we unlock some of those mysteries! Next year looks to be incredibly exciting. I have started writing another series whose working title is “Atonalism, Alienation and Appeasement”. In these classes we are going to look at the 20th century. Musically, the 20th century has shocked liked no other; splinted into a myriad of subcultures and been caught up in turbulent and violent social and political systems. These have all had radical effects on composers, performers and the listening public. Each of these classes looks at how composers adapted in these social and political situations. 20th century music is at times challenging. My aim in this series is that by explaining the environment in which pieces were written one can appreciate the music if not actually start liking it. My next big adventure in 2014 is my concert series. I have selected 7 concerts from the major musical institution in Sydney. I will be inviting people to attend these concerts with me and prior to each I will be presenting a class discussing the pieces. Unlike my usual series, people can pick and choose which classes and concerts they want to attend. Come to the classes and not the concerts; come to the concerts and not the classes! Also please feel free to invite friends to both. As the year starts to wind down, I’d just like to thank you for all your support throughout the year and I hope I have made your musical experiences more enjoyable. One last cake too. I made this Belinda Jeffery cake at my class on Harmony last week. A perfect cake for this talk as the flavours all work beautifully together as good harmony should!! Have a safe and relaxing holiday, Love me GINGER PUDDING CAKE 130g plain flour 130g SR flour 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 2 eggs 170ml golden syrup 170ml sour cream 1 ½ tsp. finely grated lemon zest 1 Tsp. freshly grated ginger ½ cup brown sugar 180g butter melted 150g pitted dates chopped 6 (I used a lot more!) crystallised ginger finely sliced Preheat oven to 180 degrees and butter a 24/5 round cake tin. Line with backing paper Put plain, SR flour, ground ginger, baking powder, salt into large bowl and whisk together for a minute. In a separate bowl add lightly beaten eggs, golden syrup, sour cream, lemon zest, fresh ginger, brown sugar and butter. Whisk until just combined Tip flour mixture into the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Toss in dates mixed with an extra couple of Tsp. of flour so they don’t fall to the bottom. Pour batter into the tin and scatter the crystalised ginger on top Belinda says to bake the cake for 35/40 minutes but I found in my oven that it was closer to an hour. Cake should spring back when pressed in the centre. Leave the cake for about 7 minutes before undoing the spring form or inverting. I served mine with a mixture of sour cream, sheep’s yoghurt, vanilla extract and a pinch of sugar! Yum!

Plans for 2014… I’ve just finished writing the final class in my 3rd series of Coffee Cake and Culture. That’s 19 classes in total (an extra one was added in for the Limmod Oz conference earlier in the year)! Not bad for someone who thought a 6 class series was going to be a huge undertaking. I’m so thrilled at how it has grown and that each time I come to the end of a series each group asks.. .’So what’s next?’ Well next year 2 new types of series are starting. The first is a continuation of the CCC series. These 6 classes are going to look at the 20th century and try and demystify this most complex century. There is virtually nothing about 1900 which was the same in 2000. Styles, ideas, forms, instrumentation, concerts, audiences, performance techniques, musical trends etc etc etc have come and gone at lightning speed unlike any other period in history. And at many times the listening public has not caught up with the advances made by the composers. Our ears seem to be going backwards while composers are striving for the new. By understand why these changes have occurred we can come to appreciate the amazing beauty in 20th century music. Earlier this week I was chatting with my sister about the next stage in CCC’s development and we came up with a new concept whose working title is either CCC’s Creative Concerts or Homage to Historical Highlights. I have chosen 7 concerts being performed by the SSO, ACO, ABO, Musica Viva, OMEGA and AO in Sydney in 2014. Prior to each performance I will give a class discussing the programme. We will look at the musical, historical and social background to the pieces as well as highlighting various ideas throughout the music. The concerts are: ABO (Australian Brandenburg Orchestra) – Bach Magnificat= Bach and Kats –Chernin – 19,21,26,28 Feb, 1March SSO (Sydney Symphony Orchestra) –Elijah= Mendelssohn – 14,16 17 May ACO (Australian Chamber Orchestra) – Timeline – 20,23,25 May AO ( Australian Opera) – Don Giovanni= Mozart – 25 July-30 August OMEGA ENSEMBLE – Carnival François – 15 August SSO – Symphony 6 = Bruckner and Piano Concerto = Dvorak – 17,19,20 September Musica Viva – Borodin Quartet – Beethoven, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky – 11 Oct Each of these concerts has been specifically chosen, not only because I want to hear them but also as a vehicle for an in-depth look at various musical styles. The first concert of example starts with J.S. Bach played on period instruments which we have talked so much about. There is nothing like actually seeing and hearing these magnificent instruments to send you back to the 18th century. The concert finishes with the acclaimed Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin’s Bach Homage Tones. Kats –Chernin wrote the music for the Sydney Olympics and has been performed throughout the world. I can’t wait to hear this new work of hers. Please join me in any or all these concerts. I’ll send you the dates I have chosen later. This is not a formal series, come to some that interested you and not to others and please feels free to ask friends to come along too. I’m really looking forward to where Coffee Cake and Culture is headed next year and I hope you enjoy the ride as well!! Love me

Eating Orange Angel Cake while discussing Concert Etiquette! There is nothing more annoying than going to a concert expecting to hear beautiful sublime music and being continually distracted by rustling programmes, coughing, people humming along ( my husband is SO guilty of that one!!) or clapping in the wrong place. This cacophony of irritating noises led me to wonder if concerts and operas were always places with such formal rules on etiquette. And it seems that they weren’t. Sitting quietly and listening to music in a formal way is a real late 19th century phenomena. In fact prior to this change, going to the opera has been likened to going to a soccer game!! So how did this change occur? After Monteverdi established the opera as a musical form with clout in the early 1600s, monarchs throughout Europe were desperate to build incredible, elaborate opera houses to show off their importance in the world’s sphere. It seems that the less important the monarch the bigger the opera house. (fast cars come to mind as a comparison but maybe I’m just being cruel!!) . The biggest being in San Carlo Naples built in 1732. ​​ In Italy, in the Baroque and Classical periods, the upper class would go to the opera up to 4 or 5 times a week. It was the place to see and be seen. Opera houses were even built so the boxes on either side of the stage faced each other rather than the stage itself. Paintings from these periods show people chatting to one another, being served drinks and basically paying absolutely no attention to the performance on stage. In Milan nobles turned their boxes into homes away from home. They had their own furniture and paintings in their boxes and had curtains which could be drawn so games of cards and the like would not be disturbed by the music below. Curtains were often only open when favourite arias began. Then if they wanted to hear it again, nobles had no hesitation in calling out to for it to be repeated. The opera was like the modern day radio or ipod. Only when the king was attending did decorum improve. A review of a performance of Rossini’s Zaro in the Morning Post of 1850 lists all the nobility and gentry who attending the opera but never mentions the actual performance! That’s how important it was!! Concerts were the new kid on the block. The first public fee paying concert was in England in 1672. They were initially performed in either taverns or inns where people would sit around tables listening to music (often like jazz venues now). When concert halls were finally built, legitimizing this art form, they were usually quite austere, more like the internals of a church. This did not mean that audiences for concerts were better behaved although decorum was probably slightly better than in the opera houses. This bad behavior was so entrenched that both novels ‘Madam Bovary’ and “The Picture of Dorian Gray’ talk about the usefulness of the opera house to chat without being heard. While Dorian Grey is trying to listen to a Wagner opera, his friend says to him- the music ‘is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don’t you think so, Mr Gray?” So how did this all change? Well it all had to do with the rise of the Middle Class. By the beginning of the 1800s the middle class was beginning to grow not only in size but also importance in society. The nobility had lost a huge amount of power, wealth and prestige fighting the Napoleonic Wars and the middle class was more than happy to take up the slack. The middle class’s mission was to educate themselves as a way of being accepted into the upper echelons of society and music was very high on their education list. Initially they copied the uncouth behavior exhibited by the elite which infuriated the nobles as they felt that these upstarts were interfering in their domain. To rectify this problem the nobles starting making more and more outrageous unspoken social rules trying to make it more and more difficult for the middle classes to achieve their goal. But something very interesting happened. As the middle class became more educated they actually started listening to the music being performed to them. Audiences began to come to concerts to ‘hear’ the music, so the composers wrote more interesting music for these educated people to listen to. Publications were written condemning the upper classes for their bad behavior and demanded better respect for the musicians and the rest of the listening public. The Musical World wrote in 1840 about a performance of Bellini’s I Puritani at Her Majesty’s, “A school for behaviour should be provided for some of the aristocratic tenants of the boxes at the theatre. The incessant gabbling of lording coxcombs is doubtless interesting to themselves, but by others cannot be regarded otherwise than as an obtrusive impertinence, and, as such, should be put down without ceremony” As more people started attending concerts it became increasingly likely that one would be seated next to a stranger rather than a friend so being on ones best behaviour became even more important. Slowly but steadily this new group of people were dictating social etiquette to the upper class – the inventors of all social norms. By the turn of the 20th century concert and opera going had become more as we know it today. Almost like a sanctuary where people can go and know they will be able to listen to music without being disturbed by others ( unless you are sitting next to a hummer!) A few weeks ago I was rummaging through my recipe file and found my good friend Tania’s secret Orange Angel Cake recipe. Tania gave me this recipe over a decade ago when her boys and my girls were great friends as preschoolers. It was just a morish as I remembered it, if not more so!! Thanks Tan for letting me share it!!! 8 eggs separated 1 ½ cups castor sugar 2cups SR flour 1cup olive oil 1cup fresh orange juice Rind of one large orange Beat egg whites with ¾ cup of sugar, then refrigerate until yolks are ready Beat yolks with remaining sugar and rind, when fluffy slowly add orange, flour and oil Take out whites from fridge and add yolk minture to whiles folding through with a wooden spoon Pour mixture into a Ungreased chiffon tin Bake for 1hr at 180C Put tin upside down when ready and let cool this way. The cake should come out very easily. Try not to have a second, or third!!

Have you ever thought about the make-up of the orchestra? Why certain instruments are included and others not? And when did the orchestra as we know it evolve – or had it always been around? I didn’t know the answer to these questions until I started writing my latest course, although I had spent so much of my professional life in an orchestra, and I have to admit the answers astounded me. So what is an orchestra? Is it just a large body of instruments playing together? If so, can an orchestra be a concert hall full of 3yr old Suzuki violinists playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or a Javanese Gamelan? Does it have to do with the instrumentation, the balance or how these elements interact with one another? An orchestra is a very specific beast. When you go to an orchestral concert you pretty much know what you are going to see in front of you on the stage. You know the instrumentation, their placement and the sounds which will be produced. But has this always been the case? And if not, how did it evolve and how did it differ over time to have the instrument combinations and set up that we now associate with an orchestra. Here is the set-up of a late Classical Orchestra like Mozart or Haydn would have used. If this is our basic orchestra, how and when did it get to look like this? Let’s start with the Renaissance period (from about 1400-1600). In the Renaissance, instrumental music was very much broken up into string music and wind music with very little music written for a combined group. The reason for this was that the wind instruments were very rudimentary and had little or no ability to tune themselves or with other instruments. As a result groups often had only one player per part. Tuning was such a big issue. Then in 1607 Monteverdi wrote Orfeo. His inclusion of both bass, woodwind, strings and keyboards in the one work would have astounded Gonzaga’s audience. On the face of it, it looks like we could call this ensemble an orchestra. But we need to see how it worked together. And that is just it; it didn’t work together or even sit together. Each instrument group had its own set role in the ensemble and as a result never worked together. For example, keyboards and plucked strings accompanied the songs, while bowed strings and winds (not working together) accompanied the dances and the brass were used for fanfares. So, although there were instrumental groups in the Renaissance we can see that they didn’t really constitute an orchestra. By the Baroque period things were slowly changing. Composing for instrumental ensembles became much more popular as great improvements in instruments took place. This meant that wind and brass instruments became easier to tune; winds started to be made in sections which fitted together which could then be lengthened or shortened to tune with other instruments. Instruments including oboes, flutes and recorders started being regularly included in string music although the Basso Continuo (usually a sole keyboard instrument at this stage) was still de riguer. Renaissance instruments which couldn’t be altered to fit the new tastes of the Baroque period simply died out. In France, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) made incredible strides towards what we would consider an orchestra with his Vingt-cinq violons du Roys (25 violins for the King). This group worked together as a unit playing for Louis XIV’s ballets, operas and his general entertainment. Lully (who was apparently a task master) insisted that techniques such as bowings be uniform throughout the group. His 5 part concept of string writing spread throughout Europe and became the norm. The Baroque period is a very long time – from about 1600-1740. At the beginning of the period instrument groups were still, on the whole, playing separately. In the case of opera, musicians often sat behind the stage, in boxes by the stage and sometimes actually on the stage itself. By the end of the period, music was being written for combinations of instruments from various instrument groups. They were beginning to work as a cohesive unit and were positioned at the front of the stage for operas and on the stage for ensemble playing. So we move into the Classical period, from about 1740-1820. During this time other wind instruments were added to the strings like the newly invented clarinet and heavily altered horn. They were included in pairs (a little like Noah and his ark!). So we now have flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets being regular members of a ‘thing’ called an orchestra – a word that was actually being used to describe this group! In this period winds are not only being used to add tone colour and double the string parts, like the Baroque period, but also being used as solo instruments within the ensemble. And most importantly specific pieces called Symphonies were being written for this body of musicians. As the Romantic period dawns, new instruments are added, the size of the orchestra is very much increased and people like conductors are added to the mix. With all the modifications and changes that have taken place with the orchestra since the Classical period it has still remained the same beast at its core. Orchestral music gives audiences abundant pleasure and has so for over 250 year. It may have taken many centuries to be established but I don’t think it is going away any time soon!